A Dinah by Any Other Name
Lorilee Craker
A Dog Named Sarah?
Eight years ago, when we adopted a one-year-old basset hound, the first thing I did was change her name. I mean, Sarah? I could name four or five human Sarahs right off the top of my head, and there’s no way, with all my pent-up name passion, I was calling the dog Sarah. At the time I was writing my first baby name book, A Is for Adam: Biblical Baby Names, so the hound was definitely getting a biblical namesake.
We eventually chose Dinah because of its similarity to Sarah, and also because I just liked the jazzy, bluesy feel, à la Dinah Washington. I didn’t know a single person named Dinah, and it seemed to suit a hound dog’s vibe, sitting on the front porch, baying at the moon. Dinah Blue she was henceforth.
Since then I’ve become fascinated with the naming process pet owners go through when that wriggly puff of fur is laid in its alpha mommy and daddy arms for the first time. Beyond Max and Sam, Molly and Sadie (the top two dog names in the country for each gender), definite trends emerge when people name pooches. Some folks pick a canine ID from something that means a lot to them, some life experience, hero, or hobby. Others choose pined-for “human” names, something they wanted to call a baby but didn’t for some reason. And then there’s the group that flat-out name their dogs after someone they know, a risky proposition yet a surprisingly popular one.
My favorite category? Names that make me snicker. My friend’s aunt (speaking of pent up) named her dog a naughty word just so she could say it over and over again and get it out of her system. Okay, so that’s a bit subversive, but what about calling a teacup poodle with pink nails Brutus or Bubba, or a brawny pit bull Cupcake or Croissant? Wouldn’t that be a perpetual knee-slapper? Although Traci’s neighbors probably weren’t slapping their knees when they heard her calling for Help. “It’s so funny, when I call him all the neighbors come running,” she said. “My brother had a dog named Taxi—same effect.”
M Is for Meaningful—and Majerle
Some bipeds want to stamp something meaningful on their quadruped’s heart-shaped tag. Take Ken and his family. Formerly missionaries in Africa, they have picked the perfect name for their fluffy friend: Huyu Ni Mbwa Kubwa, which Ken said is Swahili for “That’s a big dog.” “We call him Mbwa (dog) for short.”
Lori’s husband is a pilot, and the whole family went airborne over their clever and significant doggie designation. “Our dog’s name is Pancho Barnes—after the female barnstormer pilot. She was the same era as Amelia Earhart, but we thought it might be a bit of a mouthful to keep saying, ‘Come, Amelia. Sit, Amelia. Stay, Amelia.’”
Often a sports or literary hero carries great weight in a family’s lore. Full of admiration for a great hoops star, Michele and her family couldn’t help but bestow his last name on their German shepherd. “We named our dog Majerle (pronounced ‘Marley’) after former professional basketball player Dan Majerle of the Phoenix Suns and Central Michigan University,” she said. “His middle name is Abraham, as our six-year-old had learned about Abraham that day in Sunday school and loved the story! And now someone had to go and write Marley and Me, so now our name is not that original.”
(Majerle Abraham? It beats the pants off Buddy and Champ in the originality department, Michele!)
Pined-for Human Names
Let’s say you have chosen a handful of baby names that, for whatever subjective reason, make your heart beat a little faster. Hypothetically, you have three beloved girl names in this big, wide world, and you only have two girls. What on earth do you do with the name that didn’t make the “human cut”? In one woman’s case, shaggy Shelly became the “daughter” she never had.
“My mom always wanted a daughter named Michelle,” says Dan. “She hoped for four girls and got four boys instead, so she decided to name our first dog (a female) Shelly, short for Michelle.” But, as Dan’s story illustrates, this method of assigning a cherished yet ubiquitous name to a four-legged creature can backfire.
“The Avon lady came to the door one time, a-knocking away, and the dog was barking, so my mom kept yelling, ‘Shelly! Shut your mouth!’ The Avon lady seemed quite taken aback, since it turned out her name was Shelley.”
Puppy Love
My teenage nephew named his puppy Ashley in a fit of adolescent crushing on a certain thirteen-year-old girl in his youth group. Of course, Ashley the human went on to grind that love-struck boy under her heel like a wad of gum a couple of years later—more than once, actually. And the poor kid’s stuck with a huge, black, drooling namesake to remind him of his folly.
Some tribute names make a bit more sense, although it will depend on the honoree as to whether or not dubbing a dog in their honor is welcomed. Mary Carol’s father-in-law for one was tickled. “Once it became obvious that we were not going to have another boy in our family, I called Dad and said, ‘We got a Jack Russell terrier puppy, and this is your last chance to have someone named after you.’ He said, ‘I’ll take it!’ So Bill the dog it is.”
A Dinah by Any Other Name
Recently, I ran into Dinah’s previous owner.
“How’s Sarah doing?” she asked, as I scrolled through the list of Sarahs in my brain. “The dog. Aren’t you the people we gave Sarah to?”
Oh, that Sarah. As in, Dinah.
I didn’t get into the name change as I updated her on the rambunctious hound she had owned for just a few months before she decided her apartment was too small for a dog. Why didn’t I tell her Sarah had padded through the last eight years of her life as Dinah Blue? Because I didn’t have time, because I thought she might be mildly offended, and mostly, because just as baby naming is a privilege of parenthood, giving a beloved dog the perfect name, the moniker that suits both the dog and the family who loves it, is the inalienable right of pet ownership.
Besides, a dog by any other name wouldn’t be our sweet, smelly, one-of-a-kind Dinah Blue.